[Leica] The death of the silver gelatin prints

[roark.paul at gmail.com (Paul Roark)]

Looks is, of course, somewhat subjective.   I personally like the
matte carbon prints better than my silver prints.  I usually use some
permutation of "Eboni-6" --
http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/Eboni-6.pdf .  This approach will
work on almost all Epson printers.  I generally use and/or support the
Epson 1100, 1400, and 7800.

In addition to making the most stable images, it's also the cheapest
way to go.   MIS Associates sells the carbon and dilute versions at
http://www.inksupply.com/eb6.cfm and a few other URLs.  However, to be
sure even starving artists and others with limited budgets (like me)
could print without concern for price, I also published a formula for
a generic dilution base.  See
http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/Ink-Mixing.pdf   Commercial dilute
inks are *very* expensive water.  These bases also work with HP
(pigments, not printers) and probably Epson pigments (when I run out
of Epson K3 LM, I'll mix it from Epson M.)

The dilute inks virtually never clog because there is no binder in the
base.  The daughter who just finished 4 years at UCSC used an Epson
C88 with the home brew base and Eboni in it.  It was fed by a CIS.
I'd just top it off in the summer.  I didn't even bother to clean out
the CIS unit.  It lasted 4 years.  The base has proven good enough
that MIS has decided to mix and sell it itself.  (If you can't beat
them ...)

Epson printers are all I deal with because the piezo head is much more
tolerant of higher and variable viscosities than the thermal heads of
HP and Canon.

The idea is to keep the home "darkroom" a place where anyone can mix
their own chemicals and no company can dominate B&W or make undo
profits on what is really a very simple product.  In addition to
individual photographers, a number of professional studios and photo
schools are now mixing their own inks and saving a whole lot of money.

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com